3/14/2023 0 Comments Puckoff podcastBasically, if your right hand is lower on your stick, you’re a right shot, and if your left hand is lower on your stick, you’re a left shot. Basically, players are said to shoot either left or right. I know that we have some hockey analytics fans as our audience members, but some may not be as familiar with this topic, so could you kind of give us a sense of the difference between right- and left-hand shots in hockey? I wanted to start with a little bit of context here. Well, it’s not every day that we get to nerd out on hockey analytics, and Paul and I were just talking about this thesis of handedness in defensemen pairings is overvalued. I spoke with Tyler about how left-right pairings became conventional wisdom, and what those who follow the strategy are missing. You can put Dellow squarely in the camp of those that believe the NHL has gone overboard in their devotion to right- and left-handed pairings. He also worked in an analytics role with the Edmonton Oilers. An NHL columnist at The Athletic, he has been participating in the development of hockey analytics and writing about these ideas at various sites, including his own,, for more than a decade. And at least one expert observer believed this is precisely the case with defensemen pairings in the NHL.īen Shields: Which brings us to Tyler Dellow. But when something becomes an accepted best practice, we tend to stop asking how it became so, and more dangerously, we often become blind to the evidence that the practice may not be best at all. Paul Michelman: In pairing right-handers and left-handers, many NHL teams believe they are following a proven and seemingly obvious formula: If defensemen play on their strong side, they will be more effective at their jobs.Ĭonventional wisdom on what works can codify with surprising speed in sports, and in most other domains, for that matter. In each episode, we put one analytics-based hypothesis to the test and see how well it stands up.īen Shields: Today’s hypothesis: NHL teams have gone overboard matching right- and left-handed defensemen. Paul Michelman: In Counterpoints, we look beyond the data in search of what the data reveals, or supposedly reveals, about what’s actually happening, both on the field and off. In this episode: Is the secret to a successful defense matching righties with lefties, or were the Red Wings simply the beneficiaries of Larry Murphy’s Law? Paul Michelman: I’m Paul Michelman, and this is Counterpoints, the sports analytics podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review. As a member of the Pittsburg Penguins earlier that decade, he was the right-handed man to a different Hall of Fame lefty by the name of Paul Coffey. The two men continued to play almost exclusively together, with Lidström blossoming into a superstar.Īs for Murphy, the back-to-back Cups must have felt something like déjà vu. The result? A 42-year Cup drought ended, followed by another title the following season. Murphy was an NHL-best plus-16 in the ’97 playoffs, with Lidström close behind at plus-12. Paired with the lefty Lidström almost immediately, Murphy complemented the young Swede to a tee. Murphy was a 35-year-old right-hander nearing the twilight of his career, but after moving to Detroit at the trade deadline in ’97, he would become an indispensable member of the Red Wings’ championship run. The two lefties just couldn’t bring home the hardware, and by early in the 1996-97 campaign, Coffey was a Red Wing no more.īen Shields: Enter Larry Murphy. Perfect was a minus-six in both the ’95 and ’96 series losses, meaning the Red Wings allowed six more goals than they scored while Lidström was on the ice. Championship free for going on four decades, Hockeytown had come agonizingly close the previous two seasons, losing the Cup final in ’95, then setting the single-season wins record in 1996 but falling in the conference finals.ĭetroit boasted two future Hall of Famers on defense in Paul Coffey and Nicklas Lidström, yet the pair of left-handers had floundered in the game’s biggest moments, Lidström especially. Meanwhile in Detroit, the Stanley Cup drought is going strong. Rowling is preparing to release Harry Potter on an unsuspecting world. The English Patient has been named Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, undoubtedly the worst film ever to be so honored. Deep Blue has done honor to computers across the globe by defeating Garry Kasparov in a rematch of their epic chess battle. Paul Michelman: Join me, fellow travelers, on a journey to the spring of 1997. A weekly roundup of everything we’ve published, plus a curated reading list from our editors of the best management content released that week.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |